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Republican voters, politicians unite under Donald Trump

Even before the general election formally begins, Trump has been swiftly embraced by party elite and grassroots alike.

Charlie Sykes, a popular conservative talk radio host, has spent his mornings criticizing and castigating Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump over the airwaves. (ERIC THAYER / new york times file photo)

WASHINGTON—Charlie Sykes, an influential conservative radio host who loathes Donald Trump, received an unsolicited FedEx package at his Milwaukee studio last week.

He opened it. A man had scrawled out a terse all-caps message, in thick black marker, on a New York Times article about how right-wing activists are warming up to the polarizing Republican nominee.

The scrawler was Trump.

“Charlie,” the note began, “I hope you can change your mind.”

Sykes is not changing his mind. Which means he is increasingly alone.

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For months, Republican politicians, organizers and voters warned that nominating an erratic demagogue with little commitment to conservative principles would spark an intraparty civil war, forcing thousands or even millions of once-loyal partisans to stay home on Election Day or seek refuge in the unfamiliar arms of Democrats.

Nope.

The apocalyptic battle-to-be has dissolved into a Republican group hug. Even before the general election formally begins, Trump has been swiftly embraced by the party elite and grassroots alike. Holdouts like Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush and Sykes have been left, in Sykes’s Tuesday words, “in the wilderness.”

“It is difficult to watch, on a daily basis, prominent conservatives genuflect before this narcissistic authoritarian who rejects everything they’ve ever believed in. I’d rather be where I am than where they are,” he said in an interview. He added: “My conscience is clear. If this is what the Republican Party has become, I’m all right with being out of step with it.”

The stampede toward Trump reflects the extreme partisan polarization of the U.S. electorate, the depth of Republican animosity toward presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and the cold career calculations of party bigwigs who believe they cannot afford a bold stand against the leader.

“Short version: political self-interest matters! Most Republican elites don’t want to oppose their party’s nominee, especially if their opposition is seen as implicitly supporting Hillary Clinton,” Brendan Nyhan, a professor of government at Dartmouth College, said in an email. “Republican voters are getting those cues from elites and also can’t stand Clinton.”

Connie Coleman-Lacadie, a party committee woman in Washington state, was a staunch Marco Rubio supporter. But she has come to respect Trump’s brashness and intelligence, and she thinks a Clinton victory would be a calamity.

“We’ve gotten to be so politically correct around here that she lies, she’s a thief and she’s put our country in danger, and yet we do nothing to her. If somebody else, if Joe Blow out here did any of that stuff, they’d be in jail in a minute,” she said.

Trump has made a concerted effort to shore up his position with skeptical right-wingers. Last week, he delivered a pro-gun speech to the National Rifle Association and released an unusual list of 11 conservative judges he said he would consider for the Supreme Court.

Rick Perry, the former Texas governor, was the first candidate to strongly denounce Trump during the primaries, calling him a “cancer on conservatism.” Perry now calls him “talented.” Former Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, who had declared Trump “an egomaniacal madman,” wrote a May essay declaring Clinton worse. And South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, who called Trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot,” has begun urging donors to support Trump, CNN reported; Graham has disputed the report.

Trump’s new-found elite support does not appear to reflect genuine enthusiasm. Concerned about Democratic attack ads, many Republicans in Congress won’t even say Trump’s name, instead saying that they support “the nominee.” And many won’t talk about Trump at all. But they appear to have nothing to fear from Republicans who once seemed poised to revolt.

Primary-season polls suggested a third of Republican voters might not support Trump as nominee. In a Washington Post poll last week, 85 per cent of Republicans said they supported him.

“Even for people who may continue to still not particularly like Trump—when the alternative is a Democrat, these people still prefer the Republican,” said Laurel Harbridge, a Northwestern University political science professor.

The American public has not been this polarized by party in at least 80 years. Studies suggest that as few as five per cent of voters are true up-for-grabs swing voters. Someone’s party identification, Harbridge said, is a better predictor of how they will vote than what they tell a pollster 10 months from the election.

Once-dubious Trump supporters say they have given him real thought. Bryan Wagner, an insurance businessman and former New Orleans councillor who served on Rubio’s Louisiana campaign, said he used to be concerned about how quickly Trump made decisions. He thinks the candidate has changed.

“He seems to have a better grasp of the issues. He seems to have a softer edge,” Wagner said. “He’s not attacking as much as he was.”

Wagner added that cutting himself open would reveal not blood but elephants. The elephant is the Republican Party symbol.

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